January 01, 2014

Be It Resolved, Part 3: Crystal Clear [by Amy Glynn]

Epiphany: manifestation, appearance. Moment of Clarity; sudden deep understanding of a previously elusive truth. Seeing thg the light. Something that crystallizes. Krustallos: ice. Crystals are defined as an ordered arrangement of a material's constituent atoms or molecules extending in three dimensions. They exist at both microscopic and macroscopic (compound) levels. They include snowflakes and spikes of quartz; the salt on your table and the diamond in your wedding ring. Of course, nothing having a simple definition, there are also liquid crystals, which exist in everything from your computer monitor to our laundry soap to tobacco leaf mosaic virus. Clear? Ha.

In optics, the word" resolution can refer to a couple of different things: image resolution in a picture, on a computer screen, a television, is the clarity or fineness of the image achieved by density -- the more pixels per square inch, the higher the resolution of the image. It can also have the meaning of reducing things to their constituent parts, in the manner of sunlight breaking into its spectrum of colors through a prism.

Swedenborg, the King of Analogy, is considered by many to be the grandfather of crystallography, and it's probably not a coincidence that he was both a scientist and a seer. Crystals were at the heart of his vision of the world (as both scientist and theologian) -- he saw them as the base unit of all things; not just minerals and ice but living things, leaves, animals (which makes sense because as anyone who's ever done the 4th grade make your own rock candy experiment knows, they grow! And indeed, research has begun to suggest that human connective tissue is a crystal matrix). In fact the crystal is one of the few places where science, religion, philosophy, art and the occult meet and find they have relatively little for which to judge one another. The center of solid state physics, the basis for radio technology, the magus's shew-stone and the scryer's portal to the past and the future, the crystal has been an object of fascination to many, including Swedenborg acolytes Blake, Thoreau and Emerson, and the Romantic poets Coleridge, Shelley and Byron, all of whom were obsessed with ice.

Crystallomancy is a relic of the dark ages, really -- yet as Thoreau and Emerson discovered, gazing at the crystal patterns of hoarfrost on a window or staring intently at the surface of the pond, there does exist within crystals a sort of portal to... clarity, to a meditative trance where ego dissolves and vast truths manifest. Or crystallize. Or resolve. Crystals are manifestations of geometry and architecture, of form and thus of poetry -- they are tropes, in a sense (lens, mirror, window, air, light). They reflect and illuminate human response to nature. They clarify.

No major epiphany here, but it's the icy season and the first day of the year, and I'd like to offer up a hope that for each of us, the year ahead is one of clarity and perhaps even occasional transcendence -- not of resolutions but of resolution. Microscopic, telescopic. May something important crystallize when you least expect it, and delight you. Happy New Year, folks. Have a High Resolution 2014.

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Be It Resolved, Part 3: Crystal Clear [by Amy Glynn]

Epiphany: manifestation, appearance. Moment of Clarity; sudden deep understanding of a previously elusive truth. Seeing thg the light. Something that crystallizes. Krustallos: ice. Crystals are defined as an ordered arrangement of a material's constituent atoms or molecules extending in three dimensions. They exist at both microscopic and macroscopic (compound) levels. They include snowflakes and spikes of quartz; the salt on your table and the diamond in your wedding ring. Of course, nothing having a simple definition, there are also liquid crystals, which exist in everything from your computer monitor to our laundry soap to tobacco leaf mosaic virus. Clear? Ha.

In optics, the word" resolution can refer to a couple of different things: image resolution in a picture, on a computer screen, a television, is the clarity or fineness of the image achieved by density -- the more pixels per square inch, the higher the resolution of the image. It can also have the meaning of reducing things to their constituent parts, in the manner of sunlight breaking into its spectrum of colors through a prism.

Swedenborg, the King of Analogy, is considered by many to be the grandfather of crystallography, and it's probably not a coincidence that he was both a scientist and a seer. Crystals were at the heart of his vision of the world (as both scientist and theologian) -- he saw them as the base unit of all things; not just minerals and ice but living things, leaves, animals (which makes sense because as anyone who's ever done the 4th grade make your own rock candy experiment knows, they grow! And indeed, research has begun to suggest that human connective tissue is a crystal matrix). In fact the crystal is one of the few places where science, religion, philosophy, art and the occult meet and find they have relatively little for which to judge one another. The center of solid state physics, the basis for radio technology, the magus's shew-stone and the scryer's portal to the past and the future, the crystal has been an object of fascination to many, including Swedenborg acolytes Blake, Thoreau and Emerson, and the Romantic poets Coleridge, Shelley and Byron, all of whom were obsessed with ice.

Crystallomancy is a relic of the dark ages, really -- yet as Thoreau and Emerson discovered, gazing at the crystal patterns of hoarfrost on a window or staring intently at the surface of the pond, there does exist within crystals a sort of portal to... clarity, to a meditative trance where ego dissolves and vast truths manifest. Or crystallize. Or resolve. Crystals are manifestations of geometry and architecture, of form and thus of poetry -- they are tropes, in a sense (lens, mirror, window, air, light). They reflect and illuminate human response to nature. They clarify.

No major epiphany here, but it's the icy season and the first day of the year, and I'd like to offer up a hope that for each of us, the year ahead is one of clarity and perhaps even occasional transcendence -- not of resolutions but of resolution. Microscopic, telescopic. May something important crystallize when you least expect it, and delight you. Happy New Year, folks. Have a High Resolution 2014.